BOSTON – It was about an hour too late, but Bruins defenseman Dennis Seidenberg came up with a solution to Boston’s problem of shooting the puck into New York Rangers defensemen and forwards more often than it reached goaltender Henrik Lundqvist today.

“Instead of winding up for one-timers, you might want to – or I might want to – fake the shot and just wrist it,” said Seidenberg after the Bruins dropped a 1-0 decision at TD Garden. “I think that might’ve been more effective. But at the end, you always know better after. So I think next time we play them, we have to fake them, try to get them down and then they can’t move, right?”

Seidenberg didn’t really need that advice considering he only had one of his shots blocked. But Zdeno Chara (5), and Adam McQuaid and Andrew Ference (4 each) were a huge part of the Rangers racking up 29 blocked shots in the victory. New York is second in the league in that department, but nearly 30 blocked shots – Lundqvist needed to make just 26 saves – is pretty ridiculous.

“They’re a pretty dedicated group at getting in the shooting lanes,” said Bruins head coach Claude Julien. “They’ve always been that way and that’s what they did tonight. Obviously you want your guys to find those shooting lanes and you want to get those pucks through, but even at the end when we were firing away late in the third, they were all collapsed and doing whatever they had to do to block shots. They were willing to pay the price.”

The Bruins to a man refused to use any sort of a letdown from Thursday’s emotional blowout victory over Montreal as an excuse for their lackluster performance through today’s first 40 minutes. That’s fine, considering they still had a chance to at least earn a loser point despite only playing near their peak performance level for one third of the game.

Had they made the necessary adjustment to the Rangers’ lane-clogging ways, they probably would’ve solved Lundqvist at least once and not wasted Tuukka Rask’s fine performance (22 saves) down the other end.

Based on their standing in the league in blocked shots and their performances against the Bruins this season in two prior meetings, Boston had to know what it was in for. But while the Rangers slid, dove and spun into every position imaginable to keep the puck away from the goal, the Bruins stood still and continually made life easier on the Rangers – except for the puck-sized bumps and bruises they probably left town with.

“I mean, it’s tough,” said Ference. “Obviously they play very good in the lanes, play it very tight in their own end. And if you don’t [want to] get shots blocked, you’d be passing around the perimeter the whole game. You have to take the shots and you have to try to get it through. But they do a good job [of blocking them]. You’ve got to get it through three or four guys. Some games you get good bounces and some of them will go in. It was tough, they did a good job.”

Boston didn’t practice yesterday in the aftermath of the Canadiens battle. They still must’ve watched tons of video of the Rangers’ shot-blocking ways. Several times this season during media briefings Julien praised the Rangers’ ability to front the shots, so you know he and his staff had to have passed that info onto the players.

Still there was a failure to execute and adjust. Part of it was effort and part of it was stubbornness. Maybe the Bruins thought they could break the Rangers’ will by clobbering their shin pads, hips and rear ends enough times. If the game was 120 minutes long, that might’ve happened. In a 60-minute affair that just wasn’t going to happen.

The Bruins get another shot to apply Seidenberg’s strategy against the Rangers a week from Monday. They could also put it to work Sunday night in Philadelphia, as the Flyers are the fourth-ranked shot-blocking team in the league.

A couple victories this week featuring plenty of points from their back end might’ve caused the Bruins to think these things are going to come easy. Hopefully for them the Rangers’ block party alerted them to how much harder they have to work for their offense during the rest of the stretch run.

I think another Ryder benching is called for. He looks like crap on the second line, he’s useless as a 4th line guy, and the 3rd line is looking good right now. I’d put Marchand back on the second line, Paille on the 4th line, and Ryder in the press box.

I agree with with your Ryder insight TLC not only is playing without any confidence he doesnt appear to be trying to work his way out of it..maybe calling up Caron would help light a fire under his ass…

I don’t think they played all that well today. I don’t think they totally stunk, but they had a really hard time generating any sustained offense in the first two periods. They picked it up in the third period, but it was too little too late.

With every game it becomes pretty clear that there isn’t really a place for Ryder on the team. He doesn’t fit with the fourth line, he pretty much stinks on Bergeron’s line and the Kelly, Peverly, Seguin seems to be clicking.

Call me wrong, but I thought we played a pretty good game against a pretty good team today. I really liked what I saw, especially in the third period. We did what Detroit does. Detroit always plays a full 60 minutes, but when it comes to the third period, and it’s close, they just put it into a whole new gear and punish weaker teams.

I felt that we really took it to the Rangers today, and if they weren’t on such a streak themselves, the result would have been similar to Montreal’s. I just love how the Bruins played like there was only one minute left in the game, when there were like twelve minutes left in the game. I believe that this hunger will transfer into the next game and hopefully we catch the opponents sleeping like we did against Montreal.

Bruins seemed to lack the energy needed to slow down the highly inspired Rangers today. They turned it up in the 3rd and showed they can dominate when they want. There were a few outlet passes I saw that should have been made to avoid those blocked shots, and Lungtvist wasn’t tested with traffic until the 3rd period. I think it would have been a different game if was held tonight at 7:30PM. My opinion.